3D Build Planner - Links

Easy Lumber Placement

Question: Is there any easier way to add lumber than with all the numbers and all the fields?

Answer: There sure is.

If you’ve watched the quick start video here (www.3dbuildplanner.com/videos.htm) then you’ve seen that lumber can be added by entering the position into the Lumber Placement fields and pressing ‘Add’. Lumber can also be added by double clicking anywhere on the Project Area surface (the green grass), to mark the position, and then pressing ‘Add’. These are good options but they’re not that effective when you want a piece in a certain spot, such as right up against another piece or Flush with a piece. So how can that be done?

Meet the Grid Tool

The Grid Tool icon can be found in the toolbar along the top window. The Grid Tool takes a single piece of lumber as input and creates a semi transparent ‘Guide Wall’ along a single face of the selected piece. You use the Guide Wall as a guide to move other pieces up against. This lets you select one or more pieces and move them in relation to the position of another. For example, if you want to move several pieces of lumber Flush against a Fence post, you can select the Fence post, start the Guide Tool by pressing the icon in the toolbar, and proceed to move your selected pieces up against the Guide Wall which is aligned with the Fence post.

The Guide Tool has two main buttons labelled ‘Face’ and ‘Direction’ that let the user change the face on the selected piece of lumber as well as change the direction of the Guide Wall. Depending on how you want the Guide Wall positioned on the selected piece, these buttons can be used to alter its position. For a video with the Guide Tool in action, see the Fence 101 video (www.3dbuildplanner.com/videos.htm) for an example using the Guide Tool to move entire Fence segments in line with one another.

So go ahead and experiement with the Guide Tool, a very handy utility for moving pieces up against another piece of lumber or another surface.